My
paternal great-grandfather, John Nathaniel Henning (far right), taken on one
of his construction sites, about 1912 My
paternal great-grandfather, John Nathaniel Henning (far right), taken on one
of his construction sites, about 1912 John Nathaniel Henning (1861-1947), my paternal great-grandfather, was born 22 August 1861 in Dixon, Lee County, Illinois, the second son of Thomas Henning (1832-1897) and Sarah Melissa Hendrix Smith (1824-1890). An older brother, Charles W. Henning, was born in Port Dover, Ontario, Canada, in 1858. John's father Thomas was born in Wilmington, Devonshire, England, and came to Ontario, Canada, with his family in 1838. He married Sarah Melissa Hendrix Smith, a widow from West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in Aurora, Illinois, in 1856. After living for a time in Port Dover, Ontario, Thomas and Sarah settled in Dixon, Illinois, where Sarah's mother, Electa P. Phelps Hendrix, had moved in 1858 with her children.
Thomas Henning was an amateur architect and carpenter and built houses and churches in "boom" towns. He had settled in Aurora, Illinois, in the mid-1850s when the town was experiencing a phenomenal explosion in population and construction. Later, he and his son John would work together on construction sites, and John became a talented carpenter and general contractor.
In 1866, the Hennings moved to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where Thomas opened a contracting business. John was raised as a Baptist and attended Sabbath School at the local Baptist church in Fond du Lac. During Sarah Henning's illness in the early1880s, a farm girl from nearby Byron, Wisconsin, Mary Coleman (1849-1923), was employed by the Hennings to cook and keep house. Mary Coleman, a Catholic, married John Henning in a civil ceremony in Fond du Lac on 8 November 1882, and both families had difficulty accepting the marriage because of the couple's religious differences and the wide age gap between them (twelve years).
Charles
W. Henning (1858 - ?) and John N. Henning (1861-1947), Dixon, Illinois, about
1864
In early 1883, Thomas Henning and his two sons, John and Charles, filed on three homestead claims in Crow Lake Township, Jerauld County, Dakota Territory (now South Dakota). Each of the Hennings filed on a quarter-section of land and, after a season of living in sod houses, built permanent homes. Life in the Dakotas was tough enough for early settlers, but the Henning women must have had a particularly tough time as they were left alone for extended periods while Thomas, Charles, and John "boomed" around working construction sites. Their travels took them to Rapid City, Deadwood, and Omaha. Late in her life, John Henning's elder daughter, Eva Marie, vividly recalled the blizzard of 1888 when the family was cut off from neighbors for a good portion of the month of March. During one period when the Henning men were away, Calamity Jane is purported to have arrived at the Henning homestead to find Mary Henning ill. Calamity Jane allegedly cooked and took care of Mary and helped nurse her back to health.
After a few successful years of planting flax and winter wheat, the Hennings lost their crops during a lengthy drought, and finally they abandoned their claims in 1888. Their subsequent travels took them to Omaha, Nebraska, and later to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where some of Mary Henning's family had moved. Around 1892, the Hennings moved to Minonk, La Salle County, Illinois, where the Thomas and John built homes and the local church, and then around 1894 they moved to nearby Toluca, Marshall County, Illinois.
Thomas Henning died around 1897, and John then moved with his family to Chicago's South Side, settling around 37th and State Streets. Around 1899, they moved to a row house at 4137 S. Langley Avenue and opened a boarding house. The income must have helped keep the family afloat, for John Henning hadn't given up his independent life, continuing to "boom" around the country and send money back home when he could. Occasionally he worked construction jobs in and around Chicago, including bridge projects for spanning the Chicago River and the finishing work for the Iroquois Theatre on Randolph Street. The final inspections for this building were pushed through with great haste so as not to delay the Theatre's opening in late 1903, and when the Theatre burned on 30 December 1903, the huge loss of life (over 600 people, mostly women and children), was attributed to the failure to install exit signs and sprinkler systems in accordance with fire laws.
John Henning seems to have settled down after his daughter Mary's marriage and the birth of his grandchildren John Jordan Flannigan (1913-1986), William Henning Flannigan (1916-1999), and Eva Mary (1924 - ). He continued to work construction sites around the Midwest, and also did home remodeling in the neighborhood. He converted his own home on Lake Park Avenue to a two-flat during the Great Depression. In the 1920s he took up a career as an automobile salesman, but an accident in which he totalled his brand-new 1924 Oldsmobile at 55th Street and Woodlawn Avenue seems to have cured him of a love for automobiles.
After the death of his wife Mary in 1923, John Henning continued to live with his unmarried daughter Eva. In 1929, he decided to make use of her musical abilities and opened a "tea room" at 37th Street and Lake Park Avenue. The venture was a success, so he leased a larger space at 810 East 39th Street for a dance hall, calling it the Lake Park Club. The venture ran into financial trouble soon after its opening, and John's son-in-law John Flannigan joined forces with him to salvage the operation. The entire family contributed their time and talent, and the resulting experience seems to have brought the family closer together. John's grandson John Flannigan spoke in later years of how many marriages had resulted from couples who were first introduced to each other at the Club Lake Park. One of these marriages was that of John Henning's elder daughter Eva Marie and Albert Leo Tripp (1901-1975) of Charleston, Illinois, whose brother Francis played drums in a musical group at the Club. Eva and Leo were married in 1939.
Following the death of his son-in-law John Flannigan in 1944, John Henning moved into his daughter's house at 4112 Ellis Avenue. In early 1947, his name surfaced on a list of prospective members of a construction crew needed in Panama. He was quite amused that, through some bureaucratic snafu, he had been called out of retirement at age 85 to undertake a trip to Central America. His health declined rapidy, and on 16 March 1947 he died at home. He had never adopted Catholicism—indeed he had little use for Catholics as a general rule—but nonetheless he was buried next to his wife at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.